About Us
Hopco Pty Ltd was formed in April 2001 by John and Sandy Ross with the aim of supplying the needs of small breweries, micro breweries and home brew outlets alike with quality Australian and Imported hops and hop products.
Hopco also represent Handtmann Filtration in Australia & NZ and also South Africa. Handtmann are manufacturers of filtration and sterile filtration equipment called MMS (the multi micro system). They have recently developed a new beer stabilization system called CSS (the combined stabilization system) which does away with the need to use PVPP & Silica.
About the people
Co-owner and Director John Ross has been in the hop industry since 1975, starting off as general manager of farms for Henry Jones IXL managing at one stage roughly 1300 acres of hops in Tasmania and Victoria. In 1980 he was seconded to manage 5 South African Breweries hop farms near George in South Africa for a period of just over 2 years. During that time he developed an artificial lighting scheme which led to improved yields of over 100%. All hops in South Africa are now grown under lights. On his return from South Africa he had a brief period as Technical Manager of Australian Hop Marketers and as Sales Manager.
In 1986 John left IXL to start a new company named Hopunion Australia. This company was involved in hop growing (through a partnership with Stewart Ferguson at Scottsdale in NE Tasmania) and hop trading in Australia, NZ and SE Asia (including China)
Hopunion Australia's parent company, Hopunion Raiser, Scharrer KG of Nurnberg Germany merged with Joh Barth and Sohn in May 2000. John, Jocelyn and Sandy Ross, who were at this stage all working for Hopunion Australia, were retrenched as a result of this merger in April 2001 and soon after Hopco was born.
Sandy Ross started in the hop business in 1998 as a hop drier at Springfield Hops. Working with co-owners Daniel and Stewart Ferguson, Sandy learnt to dry hops and about the picking of hops on their 55 acre hop farm in North Eastern Tasmania.
Sandy joined Hopunion Australia in 1999 as trainee Manager. Over the next 4 years he also studied accountancy at night school. Sandy is now Managing Director and responsible for all sales to micro breweries and home brew outlets for our new company Hopco.
Backing up both John and Sandy is Jocelyn (wife of John) who is the MYOB specialist of the family business and helps with sales when needed.